It is common for athletes in most sports to train and condition by practicing various skills through repetition. For illustrative purposes only, and without limiting the applicability of the invention to other sports, reference will be made to badminton in explaining the invention and its advantages. This invention, however, can be applied and can be of benefit to any athlete who participates in any other sport.
In the sport of badminton, for example, it is common for players to train by repeatedly running to and from the corners of a badminton court. Typically, when a badminton player trains with a coach, the training routine is done under manual guidance and control of the coach. For instance, a coach may decide that footwork and conditioning training is needed for a player moving sequentially from one of the front corners of the badminton court to one of the back corners of the court, or from one of the back corners to one of the front corners of the badminton court. Subsequently, a coach may decide that a player needs to randomly chase badminton shuttlecocks (birds) to four corners of a badminton court. These traditional training methods usually rely on a coach or trainer devising a sequence of drills for the player to perform. Most often, the coach or trainer will accompany a player to a badminton court to direct the player through the sequence of drills by standing in the center of the court and quickly pointing a hand or finger to a specified corner location of the court that a player should move. This is disadvantageous, however, since coaches and trainers are not only a very expensive part of the badminton training program, but they usually must work with players on a one-on-one basis. Moreover, the training process further requires a coach or trainer to reserve a badminton court to conduct the sequence of drills and court time is very limited, as well as very expensive.
Various types of training systems have been developed to automate and control the training of player movements on a badminton court. It is known that some of these training systems include training programs implemented on computers. Examples of such training systems are described in Chinese Publication CN201862234 U, entitled “Auxiliary Device for Badminton Pace Training;” Chinese Publication CN101947384 B, entitled “Auxiliary Means Pace Training Badminton;” and German Publication DE10306918 A1, to Lorenz et al., entitled “Movement Training Apparatus for Racket Sports such as Badminton, has control unit connected to Transmitters and Receivers in Game Area, with Signaling Devices arranged in Net.” The disclosures in all of these documents are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. These prior art training systems, however, suffer from many drawbacks that have limited their use by coaches and trainers. For example, these training systems are often difficult to use and calibrate since each requires auxiliary courtside equipment (such as lasers and photodetectors or transmitters and receivers) to be coupled to a control device which is used by the system to activate a position indicating means (e.g., a backlight azimuth arrow or an optical/acoustic signal generator) to designate an area of the badminton court a player is to move.
While these prior art training systems provide training regimens which may be an improvement over the training regimens done under manual guidance and control of a coach or trainer, a need exists for a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-use training system that permits badminton players to improve their footwork and conditioning without the need for a coach or trainer to be present to conduct the footwork and conditioning drills, and which further permits elimination of the auxiliary courtside equipment required by the aforementioned prior art training systems. Additionally, a need exists for a training system that will not only permit images of the footwork and conditioning drills to be projected and/or displayed on a display device in a manner such that players on several badminton courts can be trained at one time, but will permit players to practice footwork and conditioning on their own in any location with a suitable playing surface.